A foreign ministry statement said Ambassador Bahjat Suleiman, a former general and intelligence chief, had violated diplomatic protocol by posting repeated comments on social media that criticized Jordan.

The Jordanian government declared Suleiman persona non-grata and asked him to leave.

The Western-backed kingdom has harbored more than one million refugees from neighboring Syria's civil war, and had kept a Syrian ambassador despite supporting rebel efforts to overthrow the rule of President Bashar Assad.